Praise God for this one! After an initial resolution condemning the white power "alt-right" movement (which emerged last year and has become majorly entrenched in some conservative organizations like Breitbart) failed to pass on the floor of the SBC, which met in Phoenix this week, a revised version not only passed Wednesday. This is the latest step in an ongoing work among Southern Baptists to condemn racism, including our own racist past. The convention was founded in the nineteenth century when the National Baptist Convention split over whether or not slave owners could be sent as missionaries. The North said "No," and the South left. In the last twenty years, the SBC has formerly apologized for supporting slavery, grown to include more diversity (albeit with still a very long way to go), and elected both its first black president and--just this year--the first black president of its pastors conference (who happens to be my pastor's former pastor). The final vote on the resolution condemning white supremacy, racism, and the alt-right passed almost unanimously.

FYI, I recently moved to Orlando as part of a group planting a multiethnic church. Currently we are about equally split black and white, but even we have a long way to go. For one thing, the very large Latino community here is not represented in our launch team. But God has been awesome to have brought us this far!

I think it's great when citizens can come together to find common ground and pursue peace and fun. Accepting people and forming bonds is what it's all about. I couldn't imagine my small city without diversity and all walks of life: the different music, food, cultures, fashions, ideas, religions. I really like it. Native Indian, Chinese, and Sikh people whose families originated from India are the three largest 'minorities' here, while people of many different European backgrounds (white) were once the clear majority. That's changing, as it is in most countries which are/were dominantly white.

Since the white folks here are generally getting poorer, and more of their kids (if they had any, and many don't now) are getting hooked on harsh drugs and/or empty consumerism/debt and/or nowhere jobs, and thus not reproducing as much, or at least not forming healthy families; and since a fair portion of people from other backgrounds are doing somewhat better in comparison (due to excellent business skills, importation of $ millions from their homelands, and heavy emphasis on family); and since new, successful immigrants are moving in as well, there definitely is something of a change in the air. I'm not afraid of it because I like all people, especially the productive, intelligent ones of all different walks. Canada is blessed because many of our immigrants are educated, friendly, and ready to pitch in.

But, like in real life, all is not love and brightness. There are some legit concerns when rapid changes happen which may chip away at functional aspects of society. There's the question of identity politics, engineered changes, corporate media infiltration, politically correctness, and where all this is actually heading in the bigger picture, where people are turning into pawns in a bigger game.

Before I get into that, I'll talk about your multi-ethnic church and the weird vaporware movement called the Alt Right, Darth. First off, I think the church is great. Racism is clearly bad. Coming together through the 'big ideas' to do good things is what people naturally do at their finest. The larger Southern Baptist movement is doing the right thing, because they're correcting the 'sins of the fathers', so to speak when they defended racism. My mom's neighbours are big participants in the Baptist church here and they are wonderful people, helping immigrants all the time, going so far as to as to donate significant assets and time. They're the neighbours from heaven, and my mom is so happy to see them nearly every day.

I just hope that, in its quest to reinvent itself and get back on the cutting moral edge, the SBC doesn't dwell too much on, or create too much of a big demon of, the so-called Alt Right (because if they do, then they may unknowingly be doing the work of much more cynical powers). Every motivated group fighting the good fight is sorely tempted to find an enemy, real or imagined. I personally think the 'idea' of a strong Alt Right infiltrating from the shadows is a media/ruler manufactured distortion. A fabrication. It is not a real movement; not a threat with any organization; not an emerging Trump/Bannon institutionalized entity, nor a vast grass roots white nationalist conspiracy spread by a silly attention-whore like Richard Spencer, who doesn't even really exist on the national radar (unless the liberal media wants him to briefly). Nor is it represented even by the always amusing, British-Greek-half-Jewish homosexual, black-loving, self-proclaimed agitator known as Milos Yiannopoulos (I find Milos to be a skilled orator, even adorably mischievous, but in the end, an ambitious troll testing the boundaries to get a rise from the totally dysfunctional, infantile Left -- and they deserve someone like Milos to pester them).

The Alt Right is a cloudy bad guy distortion far more unclear and even more media-hyped than the Tea Party and NeoConservative movement (the last two were not what people thought they were, but at least they had some power and could finally be defined to a degree). The Alt Right falls in to the same kind of vapor warning category put out in bulletins by the Southern Poverty Law Center (a contracted fearaganda associate of the US national security state).

Media/liberal/social justice accusations of an Alt Right menace running around in the shadows is really about something else. The rulers, who run the show, really enjoy scaring the audiences, dividing and conquering, and above all precluding certain legitimate ideas from gaining traction. It's skillful projection and theatrical demonization, so they can shape society as they wish, and weed out resistance.

Before citizens can fully figure out what's happening to their countries, the rulers examine the expected rise in reactionary sentiments, and then demonize those frustrations and conflate them with villainous peripheral nonsense that, in reality, few people cared about. Presto, chango - Look out for the Alt Right! Bunch of white supremacists. Don't think like them. All these changes are good and without consequence. The country is heading in the right direction, in our direction, if only we resist the Alt Right.